"Wilderness" by Robert Penn Warren, A Novel Of The Civil War and Early American Immigration

"Wilderness" is a 1961 novel by Robert Penn Warren. The protagonist is a Jewish immigrant from Germany who has been born with a club foot but desires to immigrate to America and "fight for freedom". The story begins in his native country where he decides to leave for America after realizing he has little hope for a good future at home. His father was killed in riots in Berlin while fighting against government troops. He has been supported and assisted by an uncle who is also a rabbi. As Adam Rosenzweig prepares to leave, he is given several religious objects by his uncle which he carries, but uses little, during the length of the novel. The uncle also provides Adam with the address of an old friend who had previously emigrated to America and become wealthy as a businessman after beginning his life as a pack trader. Pack traders, many of whom were Jewish, traveled the roads of America carrying and selling a multitude of common household items in large backpacks. In order for Adam to get to America, he signs on with a human trafficker who is providing immigrants to both sides of the Civil War to fight as soldiers. The most important object Adam owns is a very well made leather boot which a cobbler friend made for him to help compensate for is club foot. While on the ship to America, the other men learn of Adam's disability and he becomes the "least of the least"on the ship since he is now known as being very unlikely to be accepted as a soldier. He is now forced to do the most menial chores aboard ship to compensate for his passage and the captain intends to actually prevent him from leaving the ship and retaining his as slave labor for the return voyage to Germany. But one of the crew gives Adam some advice just before the ship comes to port in New York which allows him to escape the vessel. He lands in New York with nothing and a very powerful scene ensues in which Adam, lost, alone, and hungry, finds the body of a black man hanging from a lamp post where he has been lynched in ongoing race riots. Adam finds himself the next day being dragged into one of those riots which is engaged in the murder of another black man. Adam finds himself being pursued by some of the rioters but manages to escape by running into the door of what turns out to be a house in which several black people are hiding. The rioters break in and Adam finds himself in the basement hiding in the dark where no one's race or color can be recognized. The rioters flood the basement and Adam finds himself being pulled above the waterline by a black man who turns out to be an employee of the man Adam was told to seek out when he got to New York. When the rioters disappear, the black man takes Adam, who is very ill, to the home of their benefactor, the rich Jewish trader. The trader has had a son killed in the Civil War and offers to make Adam his adopted son. Adam refuses the offer and is, instead, placed with a very abusive and coarse trader who needs a wagon driver to drive a wagon load of supplies south to sell to whichever troops of either side they might contact. The group consists of Adam, the trader Jed Hawksworth, and his black employee Mose who is actually an escaped slave as the book reveals in the long run. The three characters make a slow trip south to connect with fighting troops and are a truly odd collection of equally damaged characters who have simply fallen into each other's company. Mose, who has been savagely beaten by previous owners, becomes a friend of Adam but eventually kills Hawksworth and runs away. Adam, fearing that he will be blamed for the murder, buries Hawksworth in the woods, takes one of the wagons, and heads out to find Union troops which he can join to live out his dream of "fighting for freedom". I won't spoil the ending for you by fulling disclosing what happens from here on out. I will say that I have read several of Robert Penn Warren's books and this is just as good a novel as any the man who won two Pulitzer Prizes ever wrote. It addresses issues of war, racism, hatred, segregation, immigration, disability, and discrimination as well as any novel I have ever read. It is a powerful book which has fallen by the wayside of American Literature even though it is a fine piece of work by a man who should have been another of America's Novel winners. Robert Penn Warren is, in my opinion, just as great a writer as Hemingway, Steinbeck, Buck, or any other American who has ever been described as great. If you read the book, be forewarned that the novel does use the language of the time in which it was set and you will encounter several of the epithets which are not allowe in polite society today. But the novel is far greater than any of its detractors claim it to be simply because they are prejudiced against the language of America in the 1860's. Read it and you will see that I am correct.